The Harvard Semitic Museum Palmyrene Collection

Eleanor Cussini*, Maura Heyn, Jeremy M. Hutton*, Nathaniel Greene, Catherine Bonesho

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Three Palmyrene funerary busts are part of the collections of the Harvard Semitic Museum. This article discusses the epitaphs, the portraits, and their stylistic features, summarizes the funerary busts’ documented history of possession, and offers a palaeographic analysis of the inscriptions.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)231–246
Number of pages16
JournalBulletin of the American Schools of Overseas Research
Volume380
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Nov 2018

Bibliographical note

Hutton, Greene, and Bonesho gratefully acknowledge research support generously granted by several agencies. The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education of the University of Wisconsin–Madison supported Greene and Bonesho’s travel to photograph the inscriptions
and the purchase of some photographic equipment. A grant from the Middle Eastern Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison was used to purchase additional photographic equipment, and funding from the University of Wisconsin’s Mosse-Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies and the West Semitic Research Project supported photographic training. Hutton’s travel to Cambridge to inspect the inscriptions was supported by the Harvard Semitic Philology Workshop, and his research was supported by a Vilas Research Fellowship, administered by the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education. We would also like to express our appreciation to Joseph Greene, deputy director and curator of the Harvard Semitic Museum, Adam J. Aja, assistant curator of collections of the Harvard Semitic Museum, and Martha Richardson, collections manager and registrar for the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, Harvard University, for their help in organizing the photographic session and providing additional information concerning the acquisition of the objects on which the inscriptions occur. We also owe a debt of gratitude to Brian and Lisa Greene (Sudbury, MA) and Cynthia Matthews (Cambridge, MA), who generously provided housing for the research team and, in the case of the latter, provided assistance with the
photography. Cussini would like to thank The Johns Hopkins University
for the postdoctoral grants that allowed travels to the Harvard Semitic Museum and other U.S. museums. She is grateful to J. A. Armstrong, then assistant curator of collections, Harvard Semitic Museum, who kindly showed her the information regarding acquisition of the reliefs and the letters discussed in
this article. As always, she fondly remembers Del Hillers, and wishes to dedicate her discussion of the Harvard Semitic Museum’s Palmyrene reliefs to his memory

Keywords

  • Palmyra
  • funerary portraiture
  • Palmyrene Aramaic
  • Palmyrene epigraphy
  • Palmyrene palaeography

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